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Evita’s Mix of Languages

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Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6545 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 169 of 236
03 December 2014 at 3:53pm | IP Logged 
I don't think I've mentioned this before but back in April an Italian started working in our company. He married a Latvian and they decided to live here so he's also learning Latvian. I'd be happy to help him but he doesn't ask for help much. He's very smart, he already knows English and German so he's used to learning languages.

Anyway, he's become buddies with the two loudest and most talkative guys in our room. They teach him Latvian slang and I was rolling my eyes at it all while listening to it, but a few days ago he started teaching them some Italian as well. The two guys are not much into languages but they seem to think Italian is cool. They're always laughing trying to pronounce something correctly. Heh. If they keep it up for much longer, I'll start studying Italian as well just so I can understand what they are saying. 10-15 hours of study should be enough.
1 person has voted this message useful



tristano
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Netherlands
Joined 4040 days ago

905 posts - 1262 votes 
Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English
Studies: Dutch

 
 Message 170 of 236
03 December 2014 at 4:36pm | IP Logged 
What you told about your colleague, I have to say, screams 130% Italian :D
I guess that he is learning and teaching swearwords :D

Edited by tristano on 03 December 2014 at 4:36pm

1 person has voted this message useful



Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6545 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 171 of 236
04 December 2014 at 3:29pm | IP Logged 
The Italian guy is more like the serious type, not a laid-back and relaxed guy. He did teach those other two guys some Italian swear words but I think he regretted it because those two guys were saying them too often and finally the Italian guy said: "I won't teach you any more Italian if you don't stop swearing in Italian." So they switched back to swearing in Latvian and English. Oh joy... (But really, it's not bad, they do work in silence most of the time.)

The only drama I'm watching these days is "Pride and Prejudice". Yes, there's really a Korean drama by that name. I don't know why because it has nothing to do with Jane Austen's novel - it's about a group of prosecutors and detectives and their bosses who may or may not be involved in a 15 year old crime. It's about power struggles and corruption in the justice system. At the beginning I thought it might be something like a police procedural but no, it has the central mystery of 15 years ago and everything else seems to lead to it. At first I wasn't sure whether I would keep watching this because the Korean justice system is very different from what I'm used to, I'm only starting to learn how it works so some of the dialogue doesn't make much sense to me. Plus I can't remember all the names (of people) they keep throwing around, who had which role in which crime. But - all five team members are likable and played by good actors, and the mystery is intriguing so I'll keep watching.

Yesterday I downloaded the KBS kong app. I heard them talk about it on Yoo Inna's show so I wanted to see what it is. It turns out that with it you can listen to all the KBS radio stations live without registering on the KBS website. Yesss! You might think it's not a big deal but it is. Many Korean radio stations require registering in order to access livestreams so they are not available on TuneIn or any such free radio websites. Yoo Inna's show is on KBS CoolFM so I was excited to listen to it live for the first time. It's on from 1pm-3pm Riga time and I did manage to listen to almost all of it today. It's twice as long when you haven't cut out the songs and commercials. So. Well, I was almost disappointed that it didn't sound any different because it was live, lol. I guess I will stick to podcasts after all - they are more condensed so more useful and they don't eat up my phone internet. But I will use the app to check out other radio shows occasionally, to see what else is there.

Oh yes, I almost forgot to say - I changed the names of both of my shared Anki decks so that they wouldn't get mixed up in other decks once the users load them into their Anki's. This is not doable in Anki but I asked the creator of Anki for help and I got it. I hope I won't receive any more one star ratings because of technical issues.
3 persons have voted this message useful



Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6545 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 172 of 236
08 December 2014 at 12:00pm | IP Logged 
Someone on Dramabeans mentioned that the main actors from Yoona's Street have gotten together in real life. That was completely unexpected for me. I had some time at work on Friday so I googled an article about it and tried to read it. It went a bit better than my previous attempts but I don't plan to make this a regular activity. My first priority is to understand spoken Korean so I'll stick to Iyagi and drama transcripts. I did add some new words to my Anki deck - 열애, 소속사, 교제, 시점, 차원, 떠가다, 측, 게재하다, 목격자, 게시물. And speaking of 게시물, I just added 게시판 to my deck not even a week ago. I don't remember where I saw it, probably in one of Naver's example sentences, but I instantly recognized it as a word that I had heard hundreds of times on Yoo Inna's show. I don't think I will ever press the Again button when reviewing the word 게시판. Well, maybe I'll do it in 6 months or so just to memorize the spelling better.

I managed to get some work done regarding my sentence deck on the weekend, but I've changed my goal about finishing KG In Use this year. Doing 20% in one month when I've spent 1.5 years doing the other 80% was always going to be hard, but the main reason is that I decided it was more important not to change my strategy of mixing the sentences from this book with sentences from TTMIK and from my Russian textbook. My strategy is the backbone of the deck so it's best not to compromise it by trying to reach some arbitrary goals I set for myself. I did manage to work through chapter 10 of my Russian textbook and also start chapter 11. Since the first book only has 15 chapters, it's a more realistic goal to finish this book by the end of the year.

I'm also trying to form a habit to work on my German translations at least a little bit every day. It's always the most difficult in the beginning when you think how much you still have to do. But once you've done about 60% and you can already feel the finish line coming closer, suddenly you get more energy to finish it quicker. I'm hoping that's what will happen to me this time as well.
1 person has voted this message useful



druckfehler
Triglot
Senior Member
Germany
Joined 4861 days ago

1181 posts - 1912 votes 
Speaks: German*, EnglishC2, Korean
Studies: Persian

 
 Message 173 of 236
08 December 2014 at 8:39pm | IP Logged 
Wow, I didn't know the meanings of most of those words... I know 게시물, 게시판 and 즉, am learning 교제 at
the moment and knew but forgot 목격자, but the rest... So much to learn still...
1 person has voted this message useful



Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6545 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 174 of 236
08 December 2014 at 10:21pm | IP Logged 
I sort of knew 목격자 as well, I've had 목격하다 in my deck for a long time, but I still added it (목격자) for completeness's sake. But you're right, internet articles tend to use quite advanced vocabulary, that's why I'm sampling them in small doses. It also seems to me that Korean has more words than English. Look at my list above, for example. 열애 - passionate love, that's two words in English but only one in Korean. Oh and I just remembered that I also have 우애 (brotherly love) in my deck. Then there's 시점 (point in time). Even "left hand" is one word in Korean. It's so easy to add the Chinese characters together that I suppose they just couldn't resist :) I don't know if it's a good thing or bad. I'm leaning towards good because I enjoy discovering new words using Chinese roots that I already know and also because you can express more nuances with more words. But you have to learn them first.

By the way, I'm adding all my new cards on my phone now. I still have a backlog of about 360 new cards and if I added any more new cards then Anki would put them at the end of the queue. Ankidroid, however, puts them in front so I have to use that.
1 person has voted this message useful



Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6545 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 175 of 236
11 December 2014 at 10:16am | IP Logged 
I'm still having a lot of desire to study Korean in the evenings. Yesterday I finished chapter 11 of my Russian textbook and started chapter 12. I also organized some of my bookmarks and came across GLOSS. I didn't have too fond memories of it from the previous time I tried one of their lessons but that was more than a year ago so I decided to try again. I worked through the first lesson that came up in level 1, it was about the 2010 Winter Olympics. There were two very short newspaper articles inside. They had a good mix of words I already knew and words I didn't know so I think it was right for my level. The grammar explanations were a bit strange, though, they focused on simple tenses and counters, very easy stuff, as if this article was intended for beginners. Well, it's in level 1 so maybe they think it is, but I don't think beginners should be reading newspaper articles, no matter how good the explanations. Anyway, I think I'll do more level 1 lessons when the mood strikes me and see how it goes.

I've also been thinking about restarting my Finnish. It will be the fourth time if I remember correctly. The problem is that I don't know how to approach it to keep it fun. I'll have to think some more about it. It's just... I can feel it slipping away, I'm forgetting more and more words every day and I feel like I should do something about it. I've been listening to the radio now and then but it's pretty useless as I don't understand anything.
1 person has voted this message useful



Evita
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Latvia
learnlatvian.info
Joined 6545 days ago

734 posts - 1036 votes 
Speaks: Latvian*, English, German, Russian
Studies: Korean, Finnish

 
 Message 176 of 236
13 December 2014 at 4:05pm | IP Logged 
I registered on Duolingo on Thursday. I was reading Josquin's log and the website was mentioned there and on a whim I decided to check out whether it had Finnish available. It didn't... But then I started doing the first Italian lesson and once I finished it I had no choice but to register. I'm really a complete beginner in Italian, I didn't even know the personal pronouns or how to say "thank you", but now I have completed four lessons and I'm feeling so smart because Italian is so easy compared to Finnish and Korean! It's a delight. I have no goals for Italian, none at all, I may just continue with the Duolingo lessons for the fun of it.

In other news, I got a new comment on the Anki website for my Korean sentences deck: "This deck is so amazing! You do a wonderful work and I want to hug you! Thank you so much!" That put a smile on my face. Feedback like this is worth all the effort I put into it.


2 persons have voted this message useful



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